Dishwashing agents are available to consumers in numerous presentations. In addition to traditional liquid manual dishwashing agents, automatic dishwashing agents have in particular become increasingly significant as domestic dishwashing machines have become more common. These automatic dishwashing agents are typically offered for sale to the consumer in solid form, for example as a powder or as tablets, but increasingly also in liquid form. For some considerable time, attention has focused on convenient dispensing of washing and cleaning agents and on simplifying the operations required to carry out a washing or cleaning method.
Furthermore, one of the main objectives of manufacturers of automatic cleaning agents is to improve the cleaning performance of these agents, increasing attention having been paid in recent times to cleaning performance in low temperature cleaning cycles or in cleaning cycles with reduced water consumption. To this end, new ingredients, for example more highly active surfactants, polymers, enzymes or bleaching agents have been added to the cleaning agents. However, since new ingredients are only available to a limited extent and the quantity of the ingredients used per cleaning cycle cannot be increased at will for environmental and economic reasons, there are natural limits to this approach to solving the problem.
In this connection, devices for multiple dispensing of washing and cleaning agents have recently in particular come to the attention of product developers. In terms of these devices, a distinction may be drawn between dispensing chambers integrated into the dishwashing machine or washing machine, on the one hand, and separate devices independent of the dishwashing machine or washing machine, on the other hand. These devices, which contain a multiple of the quantity of cleaning agent required to carry out a cleaning method, automatically or semi-automatically dispense washing or cleaning agent portions into the interior of the cleaning machine over the course of a plurality of successive cleaning processes. For the consumer, manual dispensing for each cleaning or washing cycle is no longer necessary. Examples of such devices are described in European patent application EP 1 759 624 A2 (Reckitt Benckiser) or in German patent application DE 53 5005 062 479 A1 (BSH Bosch and Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH).
Accordingly, it is desirable to enable the simplest possible, preferably automatic manufacture of the dispenser so that such a dispenser may be produced in a simple and inexpensive manner. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.